When Darlena Agara declared to follow Red Magic last fall, she had no idea what she was getting into. Since then, however, she's had a crash course in danger, deceit, and destruction. In an effort to gain an ally, Darlena heads to Scotland in search of another Red Witch, but she didn't count on the new obstacles (and crazy gods) that await her.

Jen McConnel now lives and writes in the beautiful state of North Carolina. When she isn't crafting worlds of fiction, she teaches writing composition at a community college. Once upon a time, she was a middle school teacher, a librarian, and a bookseller, but those are stories for another time.

Wednesday, January 28, 2015

Join Tina Moss and I this September 23 - 27 in Denver for RomCon!
We'll have a special table at the Saturday luncheon. Buy your ticket now
to get some cool swag and sign up for giveaways.

We'll also be signing copies of our books at the author signing, hosting
a Co-Writing panel, and with Sensei Thomas Casale, conducting a special
workshop on Self Defense and Writing Fighting Scenes! It's going to be an amazing time. Go to
RomCon for all the details. We hope to see you there!

Friday, January 23, 2015

As you know, I love discovering artists who inspire and fascinate me. A few months ago, I discovered one such artist, watercolor painter Keiko Tanabe. I paint with watercolors (also spelled watercolours) and this medium is especially near and dear to my heart, so it's always a pleasure to discover painters who have a wonderful proficiency with watercolors. I contacted Keiko and asked if I can do an interview with her, and she graciously agreed. Enjoy her art throughout the post, and check out her bio and contact information below.

*Please note, all images in this post are the property of Keiko Tanabe and cannot be reproduced without permission.

Interview Q&A with Keiko Tanabe

Why are watercolours your favorite medium to paint
with? Have you painted using any other media?

I
tried other painting mediums when I started out back in 2005, just to see which
would suit me better.It was watercolor that
I found more challenging but immensely captivating.A practical reason may be that I thought
watercolor would be easier to travel with.Since I wanted to travel and paint en plein air, the portability was
somewhat important.

Eiffel Tower, Paris III

How did being a world traveler affect your art?

I
have been fortunate to be able to travel both for my previous and for my
current jobs, and for my own pleasure sometimes.Travel is just another passion of mine
besides painting.I can say that traveling
over the years has made me humble, more tolerant of differences and
appreciative of the world we live in.I
think this sentiment is reflected in my artwork and subject choices. That
said, as a plein-air painter, I would be quite happy at home because I live in
San Diego that offers a variety of subjects for landscapes.

Laguna Beach, California, I

What are your favorite places to paint?

I get inspired to paint when I see an intriguing story
developing or when I see beautiful light and atmosphere.It could be a view outside my studio window
or a spectacular view of Paris from the top of the Eiffel Tower or anywhere.Out of many places where I previously
painted, some of my favorites were: San Diego, Brittany and Aquitaine (France),
Costa Brava (Spain), Venice (Italy) and villages in China.

Shirakawa-Go Gifu, Japan, XIII

You said that you are mostly self-taught. What is your
advice for beginner artists?

Practice often, on a daily basis if possible, and make
it a priority.Nothing is more important
than this, I believe.I always tell my students
to paint a lot, make a lot of mistakes and learn from them.Other things I can advise are: hone basic
skills such as drawing, study with someone you respect, find a supportive
mentor and like-minded painter friends.Learning
enriches our life but it is a journey with many ups and downs.We just have to persevere to achieve our
goal.

Chateau de Bord de Mer, Dinard, France

I love the fluidity and the looseness of your
watercolours. How do you achieve it.

Occasionally, I have people comment on my work by
saying “Your painting looks just like a photo.”But seen up close, it is far from it because I do not put in a lot of
details in my painting.I like to
simplify a complex subject into basic shapes, which I freely re-arrange to make
more visual sense.To me, to come up
with a good composition also means that it is simpler than the reality thus
will allow me to paint loosely.Technically speaking, I utilize wet-in-wet or dry-in-wet for softer
edges that create an atmospheric effect.

When
I started painting, I didn’t know any watercolor artists until I discovered a
little later works of John Singer Sargent, Trevor Chamberlain, Robert
Wade,Alvaro Castagnet to name a few.I liked their subject choices and painting
approach, which I wanted to learn for my travel journaling.As a woman and someone who would like to do
more figurative work in the future, I also admire Mary Whyte.

San Pasqual Valley, San Diego, California

Bio and Contact Info

Keiko doing an outdoor demo in France

Keiko was born in Kyoto, Japan. As a child growing up
in an art-loving family, she always enjoyed drawing and painting and won many
awards in children's art contests. However, art was not her chosen field
of study later on. She earned a B.A. in intercultural communication
(International Christian University, Tokyo, Japan) and an M.A. in international
education (UCLA, California). She then worked in international relations
positions in a Japanese government trade organization in Tokyo, at a large law
firm in San Francisco and at a private consulting firm in San Diego. In
the last 25 years, she has traveled extensively, mainly in European countries,
Asia and North America.

Through all these years, Keiko knew there was in her heart the growing desire
to someday become an artist. That, fueled by her love of travel and
strong interest in other cultures, eventually found its way out in 2003.
After learning basic drawing and watercolor painting skills at a local
community school in San Diego, she took on her first project as an artist together
with her father, a renowned scholar of French literature in Japan.
Through the Azure Sea and Sky of Provence: A Tribute to Her Joie de Vivre
(Kosei Publishing, Osaka, Japan) was published in August, 2003, authored by her
father and illustrated by Keiko. From then on, she intensely taught
herself to be fluent in watercolor painting, just as one would do to master a
foreign language.

Mostly self-taught, Keiko embarked on a professional art career in 2005 and
started exhibiting publicly. In the same year she took a workshop from
Alvaro Castagnet and discovered the joy of plein-air painting. Since that
year her paintings have been juried into many exhibitions across Americas and
in Asia and Europe. Her work has been purchased by private and corporate
collectors from all around the world. She also had her paintings
published in leading art magazines in the U.S., France and Japan.
Additionally, she self-publishes her art books and six books have been
completed by 2014. She's also a sought-after workshop instructor.
Since 2011, she has been invited to and completed successfully more than 70
workshops around the world. Keiko currently lives in San Diego,
California.

They say a soul is the immaterial essence, the animating principle, the actuating cause of an individual life.

But what if you had to share yours with the one person you hated the most?

The
soul mate principle states that for every one soul there is another
that will recognize its match, hence creating the perfect union.

But what if you had two soul mates, which would you choose?

What if your choices had eternal ramification?

Deceived,
the debut novel in the Soul Keeper Series, is a modern day love story
about the implications of having more than one soul mate, and having to
choose between the two of them. The decisions of the gods has left the
next generation, their heirs, torn between fate and reality, and
the balance of the future hangs in anticipation of what’s to come.

Today, Laurie talks about the difference in writing YA vs. Middle Grade books. Enjoy and don't forget to enter the giveaway at the end of the post!

Writing for Young Adults vs. Writing for
Middle Grade

Let me start by giving encouragement to
anyone who writes and then I’ll jump into my thoughts on MG vs YA seeing that I
write for both groups. If you love to read a certain genre or enjoy jumping
from MG to YA to YA to NA or Adult, then as a writer, don’t feel held back to
choose which you’ll stick to. I know for promotions and things of that nature
it’s a lot easier to gather a crowd around you if you only write one thing, but
if your crowd or readers are anything like me? They like to read just about
anything. There will always be room to expand into new audiences and groups, so
write what you love with passion, because that passion will bleed through and
everyone will feel it and see it in your work.

Okay! For me as a writer, that opening
paragraph says it all. I’ve actually added New Adult (which is under my pen
name Kate Thomas) to my listing too, my first book coming out this spring. I
started as a YA writer, my Soul Keeper Series my first trilogy to write simply
because I didn’t want to write sex scenes. I could write them and I’m thinking
they would be good enough to make your grandmother blush if not you too, but I
just wanted to stick to early romance… that first look and love, as well as
having minimal cursing. I read a lot of YA for those reasons myself and I just
feel like there is so much more focus on the plot and characterization overall.

I had two middle grade girls at the time
I wrote Soul Keeper and realized that I wanted to write something fun for them,
so I wrote my debut MG novel, Howl at the
Moon. The funny thing is that I couldn’t get my male main character Ben’s
voice out of my head when I wrote it, so I used him as the POV knowing that it
might be fun for my girls and me to get into the head of a junior high boy.
They are soooo comical as it is I figured being a tomboy myself and hella
immature most days that I could pull it off. It was FUN and turned out great,
though I might be a little bias.

I think the main difference between them
is that MG is even more focused on the plot or adventure, the humor and common
place settings that make sense to that age. There is a little first love type
romance, but nothing more than hand holding and a kiss perhaps, but probably
not in my opinion. YA is focused on the same things, but there is more weight
on the relationship parts of the story, the adventure can be more complex and
the diction can be increased to have more metaphors and a depth of emotion.

Let me know if you have any questions
about either and I’m happy to give my opinion/experience.

Laurie

AUTHOR BIO:

Laurie
Starkey is the author of the upcoming Soul Keeper Series,
a supernatural young adult series, and The Liarus Detective Series,
a supernatural middle grade series. She lives in Houston, Texas with
her husband, Jacob and three beautiful kiddos.

She is a CPA by
trade, a church planter and entrepreneur at heart; however, writing and
reading are passions she just can’t help but indulge in. With more ideas
than one person should be allowed, she is blessed to have a muse that
doesn’t seem to take a vacation and more energy that one might consider
healthy.

Wednesday, January 14, 2015

"You must write every single day of your life. You must read dreadful dumb books and glorious books, and let them wrestle in beautiful fights inside your head, vulgar one moment, brilliant the next. You must lurk in libraries and climb the stacks like ladders to sniff books like perfumes and wear books like hats upon your heads. I wish you a wrestling match with your Creative Muse that will last a lifetime. I wish craziness and foolishness and madness upon you. May you live with hysteria, and out of it make fine stories - science fiction or otherwise. Which finally means, may you be in love every day for the next 20,000 days. And out of that love, remake a world."